Speaker 1: Before Hurricane Maria made landfall on Puerto Rico three weeks ago,
Speaker 1: the U S territories economy was already in shambles, thanks
Speaker 1: in part to an overload of debt and an exodus
Speaker 1: of residents. Now, after this terrible storm, things are much
Speaker 1: much worse for the three point four million people there.
Speaker 1: Just fifteen percent of residents have electricity, are lacking clean water,
Speaker 1: and nearly half the phone services out. One estimate puts
Speaker 1: the damage at ninety five billion dollars, the equivalent of
Speaker 1: more than one year of Puerto Rico's GDP. So what
Speaker 1: does this all mean for Puerto Rico's economy? Will Puerto
Speaker 1: Rico even have an economy anymore? We'll talk to two
Speaker 1: people who will try to answer these questions and more
Speaker 1: today on Benchmark. I'm Scott Landman and economics editor with
Speaker 1: Bloomberg in wash Ington. Today we're going to look at
Speaker 1: Puerto Rico's economic devastation from two perspectives, One from someone
Speaker 1: who's been on the ground there, and then from someone
Speaker 1: who's very familiar with the territory's economy. So how bad
Speaker 1: is it there? Let's turn to one of our Bloomberg
Speaker 1: colleagues Jordan Holman, a reporter based in New York who
Speaker 1: spent seven days in Puerto Rico after the storm covering
Speaker 1: the situation there. Jordan's thanks for joining us today. Thanks
Speaker 1: for having me tell us a little bit about what
Speaker 1: you saw when you were there and how the hurricane
Speaker 1: disrupted life in Puerto Rico. So, Hurricane Maria very much
Speaker 1: disrupted life on the ground there in Puerto Rico. Like
Speaker 1: you mentioned at the top, most of the island was
Speaker 1: without electricity, cell service was down, a lot of the
Speaker 1: streets were not cleared because of utility poles, trees, and
Speaker 1: a lot of people did not have jobs to go to.
Speaker 1: Schools were out, and people had to bathe in the
Speaker 1: river because they did not have access to clean water.
Speaker 1: So it very much disrupted the way of life down
Speaker 1: in Puerto Rico, and it's going to be a year's
Speaker 1: long recovery until things get back to normal. And speaking
Speaker 1: of what normal life is like down there, from what
Speaker 1: I know about their economy, uh, there's there's tourism, of course,
Speaker 1: I visited there one time. There are some factories, especially pharmaceuticals,
Speaker 1: maybe some other industries too. Is it possible for anybody
Speaker 1: to get to work to get paid to do anything
Speaker 1: these days, so normal will fill dimfer for differ parts
Speaker 1: of the island. In San Juan, where tourism is um
Speaker 1: a big part of the economy more than people working tourism.
Speaker 1: In Puerto Rico, the hotels are starting to open up.
Speaker 1: You can see some cruise ships um, you know, docking
Speaker 1: in the waters there, and there's a huge concerted effort
Speaker 1: to try to jump start the economy with tourism and
Speaker 1: trying to tell people that uh, Puerto Rico is open
Speaker 1: for business. The Bacardi uh distillery down there, it's open
Speaker 1: and running. But outside of San Juan and the villages
Speaker 1: and the more mouth to this areas, that's where people
Speaker 1: are really trying to look for jobs and for opportunities.
Speaker 1: Because less of the roads are cleared there, schools aren't
Speaker 1: open and so parents are put in a tough spot
Speaker 1: of what to do next. So what you're saying, Jordan's is,
Speaker 1: you know, San Juan might be able to get back
Speaker 1: on its feet and get some touristspect but you know,
Speaker 1: for the vast, vast majority of the island is just
Speaker 1: going to be a very very long road back, And
Speaker 1: who really knows when things will ever get back to
Speaker 1: some normal stage off at all. Right Right now, many
Speaker 1: people are just looking for the commodities in life. They're
Speaker 1: looking for clean water, they're looking for housing, electricity. UM
Speaker 1: is huge issues right now, so focusing on getting those
Speaker 1: back up and running is very key. UM. Further outside
Speaker 1: of San Juan, and when it comes to the people
Speaker 1: that you talked to down there, even though its residents
Speaker 1: are American citizens, Puerto Rico has no representation in Congress.
Speaker 1: Do people there feel that Puerto Rico has been kind
Speaker 1: of invisible in some ways in this aftermath of the disaster.
Speaker 1: I mean, not that people don't know about it, but
Speaker 1: given its distance, the fatigue with other hurricanes like Irma
Speaker 1: and Harvey, that it's it's not really getting the attention
Speaker 1: and help that the people there deserved. The people I
Speaker 1: spoke to down there definitely acknowledged that there are a
Speaker 1: lot of other natural disasters happening right now. Um. There
Speaker 1: was Harvey UM in Texas and Erma and Florida and
Speaker 1: other parts of the Caribbean. Right now, there's forest fires
Speaker 1: in California. But everyone's stressed to me that while they
Speaker 1: understood that they still needed a they were still part
Speaker 1: of this country American citizens. They felt that Trump's visit
Speaker 1: it could have been a positive thing since he's the
Speaker 1: president and it brings media attention and resources. But as
Speaker 1: aid is still coming in, not everyone's receiving it in
Speaker 1: all parts of the island, and so that's a big
Speaker 1: focus right now to make sure that the aid is
Speaker 1: getting in reaching the people who need it most. Just
Speaker 1: one last question before we move on to our other guests.
Speaker 1: Is it possible to even rebuild Puerto Rico in a
Speaker 1: reasonable amount of time? We have a article out from
Speaker 1: some of our colleagues about how, uh, you know, the
Speaker 1: dead burden was so large that public employees like like
Speaker 1: police officers were already cut. I mean, everything was basically
Speaker 1: shambles already. Is it even possible to rebuild? You think
Speaker 1: Maria definitely didn't help the financial situation down in Puerto Rico,
Speaker 1: and the electrical grid needs to be rebuilt. Um the
Speaker 1: water situation needs to be handled as well. Right now,
Speaker 1: they're still in an emergency rescue recovery stage. But this
Speaker 1: is also could be looked at as an opportunity for
Speaker 1: a clean slate for rebuilding the infrastructure in a more
Speaker 1: durable way. Tesla said that, you know, they are looking
Speaker 1: into possibilities of rebuilding, and um Google has said that
Speaker 1: they're going to help with the cell service, so this
Speaker 1: could be a place where corporations can step in and
Speaker 1: help this effort. But it's definitely going to be a
Speaker 1: year's long recovery. That's uh, definitely what Friema impressed upon
Speaker 1: me while I was down there, that this is going
Speaker 1: to be a slow recovery and not everyone's going to
Speaker 1: fill it at the same time. So that's one thing
Speaker 1: that's gonna be a year's long recovery. Definitely sounds like
Speaker 1: a very, very difficult situation. Thanks, Jordan's so much for
Speaker 1: coming on today. Thanks for having me. All right, well,
Speaker 1: let's bring in Arthur McEwen. Now. He's a professor emeritus
Speaker 1: of economics at the University of Massachusetts in Boston. He's
Speaker 1: studied the Puerto Rican economy for more than twenty years,
Speaker 1: consulting to government and non government organizations, and publishing several
Speaker 1: articles for both academic and general audiences. Thanks for joining
Speaker 1: us on Benchmark today, Professor. I'm glad to be here.
Speaker 1: So from your person affect, can you just give us
Speaker 1: a little background here before this storm struck. If we
Speaker 1: can talk about Puerto Rico in some normal state, what
Speaker 1: have been the major components of Puerto Rico's economy over
Speaker 1: the years. Well, for the last ten years, Puerto Rico
Speaker 1: has essentially been in a recession. The economy has declined
Speaker 1: by well, there are various measures, but probably about fift
Speaker 1: since two thousand and six. You've mentioned, or your previous
Speaker 1: guests mentioned that there's been a large exodus. Hundreds of
Speaker 1: thousands of people, perhaps uh five hundred thousand have left
Speaker 1: the country and come to the United States as citizens.
Speaker 1: Of course they can move here easily, and that's made
Speaker 1: a big difference. That people leaving doesn't doesn't help the economy.
Speaker 1: To be sure, the recession itself has to be put
Speaker 1: in context in the sense that the Puerto Rican economy
Speaker 1: was falling further and further behind the US economy, growing
Speaker 1: slower than the US economy ever since uh and now
Speaker 1: of course it's going down well however slowly. The United
Speaker 1: States economy is going up. Um. There are several reasons
Speaker 1: for this that uh, that is, several reasons for the
Speaker 1: slow growth and then the development of the recession. All
Speaker 1: this comes before the hurricanes of course, although it's had
Speaker 1: hurricanes before, never never anything like this. In Puerto Rico,
Speaker 1: the the US government and the Puerto Rican government have
Speaker 1: focused excessively on manufacturing and attracting US firms manufacturing firms
Speaker 1: to Puerto Rico with very large tax breaks um. This
Speaker 1: has led to a distortion of the economy, a failure
Speaker 1: to focus on other industries, and hasn't done very much
Speaker 1: for employment in Puerto Rico. For example, manufacturing accounts for
Speaker 1: about forty of the Puerto Rican economic out would, but
Speaker 1: only eight of employment. You know that something is weird
Speaker 1: when those you hear those numbers. How is that possible? Well,
Speaker 1: it's possible because the firms operating in Puerto Rico have
Speaker 1: huge profits and because they basically don't pay any US
Speaker 1: taxes or Puerto Rican taxes very little on their activities.
Speaker 1: So what this is under particular U s laws. Some
Speaker 1: of those laws have been changed, but the situation has
Speaker 1: not changed dramatically in in recent years, so it's not
Speaker 1: And it costs more in lost taxes UH to to
Speaker 1: increase a job, to make a job in Puerto Rico
Speaker 1: than the salary of the job. So it's not a
Speaker 1: very good policy. But also this focus on manufacturing, which
Speaker 1: I don't think has paid off that well for Puerto Rico,
Speaker 1: has led to neglect of other sorts of industry on
Speaker 1: on the island. I mean, you mentioned earlier that they're
Speaker 1: counting on tourism to do something. Well, it's a little late,
Speaker 1: I'm afraid. UM. For the last twenty years, the amount
Speaker 1: the number of tourist arrivals has been basically flat in
Speaker 1: Puerto Rico since about If you compare this with the
Speaker 1: Dominican Republic, which started off with less tourism than Puerto Rico,
Speaker 1: now is much larger in terms of the number of
Speaker 1: tourists that come there. The reason behind this looks very
Speaker 1: much like the government of the Dominican Republic has increased
Speaker 1: its spending year after year in support of tourism. In
Speaker 1: Puerto Rico, the government spending on tourism has been basically flat.
Speaker 1: The kind of infrastructure that might develop Puerto Rico, the
Speaker 1: advertising campaigns that might develop tourism and Puerto Rico, those
Speaker 1: haven't been there. UH. And the other examples come up
Speaker 1: for UH. One case is agriculture, which has just been
Speaker 1: devastated in Puerto Rico over the years of course it's
Speaker 1: even more devastated now with the with the hurricane UH.
Speaker 1: And of course the decline in agriculture is part of
Speaker 1: economic progress has shift to a more urban and industrial economy,
Speaker 1: but in Puerto Rico it went much further. UH. There
Speaker 1: is no attention, little government extension programs to build up agriculture,
Speaker 1: to find the appropriate things. Puerto Rico now imports, by
Speaker 1: some estimates, over of its food. UM. Now it's not
Speaker 1: the best place in the world for agriculture. A lot
Speaker 1: of the island is is very mountainous. Nonetheless, there's certainly opportunities.
Speaker 1: And furthermore, UH, there's very little export of crops to
Speaker 1: the United States, whereas there are plenty of crops that
Speaker 1: could be grown in Puerto Rico, and some are some
Speaker 1: are it's not totally zero UH for export to the
Speaker 1: US market, but very little has been done by government
Speaker 1: to help with the finance, the marketing, the extension programs
Speaker 1: that agriculture needs to get going. Those are just a
Speaker 1: couple of examples of the neglect that has been there
Speaker 1: for for quite a while. Well, they're always figuring out
Speaker 1: new ways to give tax breaks to manufacturing, which is
Speaker 1: not driving the economy. Now let me let me interrupt you.
Speaker 1: Let me interrupt you for a second. So we we've
Speaker 1: had these decades of failed economic policy experiment basically in
Speaker 1: Puerto Rico, like Jordan was saying, companies like Google and
Speaker 1: Tesla are looking at ways of getting the electrical grid
Speaker 1: back online or the telecom infrastructure. Is a time for
Speaker 1: more radical economic experiments that could encourage that sort of thing,
Speaker 1: or do we really need to go back to basics
Speaker 1: and see, all right, you have a tropical location, let's
Speaker 1: put in a tourist infrastructure that that's that really works
Speaker 1: and that could actually attract visitors. Well, I think the
Speaker 1: answer is both. That is, it would be fine to
Speaker 1: start developing the tourist industry, but at the same time,
Speaker 1: there has to be something done about the electrical regrid.
Speaker 1: You shouldn't let a good crisis go to waste, uh,
Speaker 1: as somebody has many people have said. But the look,
Speaker 1: the electrical system in Puerto Rico has been very inefficient
Speaker 1: and very expensive. Uh. This is an opportunity to rebuild
Speaker 1: it in a way that is not only less expensive,
Speaker 1: more efficient, but also it will withstand hurricanes to a
Speaker 1: degree possible and also could be green. After all, green
Speaker 1: energy is becoming competitive in the United States, where where
Speaker 1: energy costs or energy prices are much lower than in
Speaker 1: Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico recons pay about twice what we
Speaker 1: pay in the States for electricity, so certainly green energy
Speaker 1: is viable. It could also be decentralized in a way
Speaker 1: that you wouldn't have the whole island being out as
Speaker 1: it virtually is is now. Just put in a whole
Speaker 1: bunch of solar panels and you could probably produce a
Speaker 1: lot of power, right Solar planels and wind as well
Speaker 1: could could be very important. And incidentally, uh, you mentioned
Speaker 1: Tesla and Google. I don't know about Google, but not
Speaker 1: only Tesla, but also a German firm is already bringing
Speaker 1: in many units for local generation of electricity through a
Speaker 1: some sort of U sun and power and also with
Speaker 1: battery systems that I frankly can't can't explain to. But
Speaker 1: that's already going on. So it does seem like they're
Speaker 1: going to need, you know, real major work to rebuild
Speaker 1: the economy, rebuild the electrical grid, and some probably some
Speaker 1: pretty innovative solutions. Let me turn to a topic that
Speaker 1: interests me personally. Actually as part of my day job.
Speaker 1: For the nine of the time that I don't actually
Speaker 1: spend recording the Benchmark podcast, I edit our dated a
Speaker 1: coverage of US economic indicators like employment, GDP, inflation, and
Speaker 1: so on. So when I was thinking about this topic,
Speaker 1: I was saying, well, let's look at economic data and
Speaker 1: Puerto Rico. And then I was looking at economic data
Speaker 1: and Puerto Rico, and there there really isn't much to
Speaker 1: speak of. Either it either doesn't exist or the estimates
Speaker 1: that are there are not really reliable. Um, why don't
Speaker 1: we have any real reliable current estimates of GDP, labor market,
Speaker 1: consumer spending like we do for the rest of the
Speaker 1: United States. First of all, the United States agencies such
Speaker 1: as the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Bureau of
Speaker 1: Economic Analysis are only responsible for parts of of Puerto
Speaker 1: Rican data. Puerto Rico by and large has its own
Speaker 1: own data system, and being outside the U S data system,
Speaker 1: a lot of data is not well collected. I mean,
Speaker 1: we have the gross national product data, for example, which
Speaker 1: is the measure of growth and so on in the
Speaker 1: Puerto Rican economy, but they use nineteen fifty four prices
Speaker 1: in order to calculate currentum current output in the economy
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty four. Now, I think the US government, the
Speaker 1: Bureau of Economic Analysis, they they look at I think
Speaker 1: it's prices, for example. Well, they're always updating it. I
Speaker 1: mean in the United States. But as long as I've
Speaker 1: been looking at Puerto Rico, it's nineteen fifty four. Well,
Speaker 1: that's absurd. Things change tremendously. New products are produced that
Speaker 1: weren't even in existence in nineteen fifty four. Uh, and
Speaker 1: old products that were important in nineteen fifty four go
Speaker 1: out of use. Those data are very unreliable. Puerto Rico
Speaker 1: is invisible in the main economic statistics like the unemployment
Speaker 1: rate and GDP that pertain to the whole US, even
Speaker 1: though even though it's residents are considered US citizens, but
Speaker 1: it's part of this status. This the status in the
Speaker 1: United States where it's part of the United States but
Speaker 1: not part of the United States. Well, it's a colony
Speaker 1: of the United States. I mean that even though it's
Speaker 1: meant it's people are are citizens. Um, it's controlled by
Speaker 1: the United States. Ultimate authority is with the United States government,
Speaker 1: but it has a certain degree of autonomy, and one
Speaker 1: of the areas in which it has a great deal
Speaker 1: of autonomy is in statistics, and the government simply has
Speaker 1: not given priority to the development of good statistical systems.
Speaker 1: And moreover, those the statistics that are gathered are often
Speaker 1: politically used and politically controlled. I'll give you one example,
Speaker 1: when the head of the Institute of Statistics in Puerto
Speaker 1: Rico realized that there were serious problems with the consumer
Speaker 1: price index and recalculated it. The government told him not
Speaker 1: to let this go public, and after a while he
Speaker 1: let it go public anyway, and they tried to fire him.
Speaker 1: They didn't succeed, but because it had a certain amount
Speaker 1: of autonomy. Another example is that the the legislature in
Speaker 1: Puerto Rico passed the law that said the government Development
Speaker 1: Bank should not release any economic statistics in the year
Speaker 1: before up leading up to an election. If we got
Speaker 1: any of that in the United States, you would you
Speaker 1: would have the endless congressional hearings and recriminations and so on. Right, So,
Speaker 1: those were clearly efforts to use the data system politically
Speaker 1: which were problems. Now, I mean, I don't mean it's
Speaker 1: all absolutely useless. I think that the employment data, for example,
Speaker 1: are of some use. Then I just we mentioned that
Speaker 1: before the storm's hipped. The August data showed that which
Speaker 1: is the most recent data we have, that unemployment was
Speaker 1: running at almost twelve in Puerto Rico. Now I hesitate
Speaker 1: to guests. I mean, if they're twelve percent employed, that
Speaker 1: would be high. The Puerto Rican debt is you know
Speaker 1: that that's the overhang on this whole situation. But if
Speaker 1: you can boil that down to uh ten seconds, how
Speaker 1: how is that going to play out? Well, I just
Speaker 1: say with the debt, the President said it has to
Speaker 1: be wiped out. He hasn't got authority to do that,
Speaker 1: but they have to find some way to greatly reduce
Speaker 1: the burden of the debt and Puerto Rico or the
Speaker 1: situation is basically hopeless. Well, on that note, on that
Speaker 1: hopeful note, we're gonna have to leave it there. Arthur,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for speaking with us today. Thank you.
Speaker 1: Benchmark will be back next week and until then, you
Speaker 1: can find us on the Bloomberg terminal, Bloomberg dot com,
Speaker 1: or Bloomberg app, as well as on Apple Podcasts, pocket casts,
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Speaker 1: You can follow me on Twitter at at scott Landman,
Speaker 1: and Jordan Holman is at at j O R t
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